Monday, November 30, 2009

Hooray for the Swiss for voting to ban minarets because it is a symbol of islamic supremacy, the repression of women and sharia law which has no place in a free country. I'm hoping one day this will expand to banning mosques and madrasses as well, but this is a start in the right direction. Now the rest of the west needs to follow Switzerland's lead.

The West Begins to Fight Back

Its’ a quiet New York Sunday and I’m sipping my coffee, reading my email, the newspapers, the online media, and looking out my window at newly bare branches in a weak winter sun. Suddenly—small miracles begin to appear.

According to the BBC, more than 57% of Swiss voters in 29 cantons supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets. Partial results from the final canton indicated 68% of people there supported the ban.

Look: I happen to like minarets but I also understand that today they unfortunately symbolize radical Islam which is a bad thing for women and other living beings.

Western as well as Muslim and other immigrant women who wish to assimilate have the most to lose if radical Islam takes over. Thus, early on, women led the Swiss in a poll about whether or not minarets should be banned. Only 31% of men compared to 39% of women voted for the ban. Some say this was due to a vigorous feminist campaign about women’s rights. Socialist politicians viewed the feminists as unacceptably anti-immigrant. Women viewed the minarets as unacceptably anti-woman. Julia Werner, a local housewife said:

“If we give them a minaret, they’ll have us all wearing burqas. Before you know it, we’ll have sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won’t be Swiss any more.”

And, Julia Onken, a Swiss feminist leader, warned that failure to ban minarets would be “a signal of the state’s acceptance of the oppression of women.” She sent out 4,000 emails attacking Muslims who condone forced marriage, honour killings and beating women.”

A conversation group hosted by Yahoo.com is allegedly being used to build support for a new campaign of violence against Israel.

Lebanese-born activist Fadi Madi says he started the groups Lebanon View and Palestine Intifada to garner support for a new "intifada," or uprising, against Israel.

One of the events promoted is the Gaza Freedom March, a five-day protest scheduled to begin Dec. 27 that will begin in Cairo and culminate in Gaza.

News of the Gaza protest comes on the heels of the Middle East Media Research Institute reporting Palestinian officials are considering a new anti-Israel intifada.

In a message sent through the Lebanon View group, Madi says he hopes the march is the beginning of a new international movement.

"As an international movement … our faith in our common humanity leads us to call on all parties to respect and uphold international law and fundamental human rights to bring an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories since 1948 and pursue a just and lasting peace. The march can only succeed if it arouses the conscience of humanity."

(Story continues below)

The campaign declares "an end to the military occupation that began in 1948 is a major condition for establishing a just and lasting peace."

The meaning is clear. Madi seeks the elimination of Israel.

Lebanon View e-mails feature a link to a dissolution of Israel petition.

When initially contacted about the sites, Yahoo said the company encourages dialogue.

"Our goal for Yahoo Groups and all of our online communities is to foster dialogue and interactions that are safe, meaningful, and respectful. We take the rights of our users very seriously, including their right to freedom of expression. At the same time, and as expressed in our Yahoo! Groups Guidelines, we do not permit harassment or abuse or threats or advocacy of violence."

When informed that the sites were being used to gain support for rebellion against Israel and were linked to sites promoting armed conflict, Yahoo released a statement through spokeswoman Fiona Tang.

"Yahoo is taking this matter very seriously and is actively looking into this matter," she said.

The Israeli government also has not responded to requests for comment on this story.

E-mail bulletins and press releases for the march say American novelist Alice Walker and Philippine peace activist Walden Bello will participate in the event.

Walker, author of the novel "The Color Purple," is a well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause. Walker's website features video of her participating in a Gaza protest marking the International Woman's Day.

ContinuedCelebrating international woman's day by showing solidarity with the most brutal misogynists in the world, muslims. Alice Walker: Anti-Semite, anti-woman, pro-jihad, pro-sharia.

I don't like that the writer claims that so-called "islamophobia" in Europe is as disturbing as anti-Semitism. There are actually legitimate reasons for Europe to fear and hate muslims since the scourge of islam has become a cultural and physical threat to Europe, poised to destroy Europe as we know it. Muslim immigrants furthermore refuse to assimilate, live off handouts from the state, form their own separate enclaves within the larger societies where sharia is being instituted and non-muslims dare not tread. On the other hand Jews are a productive, assimilated minority which presents no threat to Europe and in fact has enriched Europe, its contributions in the arts and sciences are well known. So there is no logical reason for anti-Semitism.

Comment / Anti-Semitism in Europe: New prejudice fans flames of the oldest hatred

By Morten Berthelsen

Tags: Israel News, Islamophobia

Israeli soldiers harvest Palestinians' organs for profit, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports in August, following up with an op-ed claiming Muslims are the greatest threat to society since the Second World War. The latest installment is an article on foetus diagnostics under the headline: "It is not wrong to want perfect human beings" - in effect an excuse to discard "weak individuals" in order to breed the ideal. Ideas not a million miles away from the ones that rang across the Rhineland seven decades ago.

Aftonbladet, albeit a mere tabloid, perfectly illustrates the tide that has swept over all of Europe once again.

Take a look, for instance, at the political handling of the three articles mentioned. The article on cultivating perfect human beings fostered no response. Donald Boström's report on the IDF harvesting organs of Palestinian youth caused massive outrage in Israel but no official denouncement from the Swedish government. As it should be. Though the article is highly problematic, unreliable in its web of rumours, assumptions, myths, and whispers, scientifically ludicrous and the author's agenda seems crystal clear, the Swedish government was right in minding its own business.

And that is exactly the reason why the entire political spectrum's harsh condemnation of the op-ed by Sweden Democrat Jimmie Åkesson on the Muslim threat to Sweden, and therein Europe, is that more conspicious. Politicians should stick to their own affairs, and not interfere. Their indignation can partly be explained by the fact that the piece was an actual political statement - a man with a mission to combat Islam. But in a rhetorical perspective the need to defend Muslims but not Jews is nonetheless remarkable.

The double standard should be obvious, but aren't. There is no comment on the fact that the op-ed's criticism of circumcision, a lack of New Testament and "ritual slaughter" also targets Jews. All party leaders condemned the piece. One government minister even claimed that Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism, as though the latter has ceased to exist.

Ancient demons reawoken

It is beyond any doubt that the scourge of Islamophobia intensifies and comes under extreme scrutiny as Muslim populations increase all over Europe. But even though it is blatantly obvious that anti-Semitism is very much alive and back with a vengeance, this ancient demon of Europe is being silently suffocated by the wave of anti-Islamism.

In an otherwise important piece by The Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on the growing aversion towards everything Islam in Europe, she surrenders to the grave mistake of describing Islamophobia as "a yellow star [of David, a symbol of Nazi persecution of the Jews] ... of our time." This only weeks after she on Yom Kippur wrote a column characterising Israel as "fanatic and aggressive" as Iran, referring to the Goldstone Report as "the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza", and citing images from Operation Cast Lead.

Alibhai-Brown is dead right, though, in pointing out the hatred of "the enemy within", namely, the Muslims, based on the deeds of the "soldiers in Allah's mercenary army" - the radical Islamists. Here, the dimension of fear plays a key role. It has become commonly accepted to equate Islam with fanaticism and terrorism, an appaling misconception that will only result in marginalisation, stigmatisation, and an amplified impact in a self-fulfilling prophecy with increased radicalisation. Much in the same way that persistent jealousy in a relationship stimulates adultery. Keep calling me a cheater, and I will become one.

Liberals decry ethnic cleansing except against the Jews of Israel, where they actually endorse it. Liberals railed against South African apartheid but now demand it be implemented against the Jews of Israel. NATO bombed Serbia because of the supposed ethnic cleansing of Albanian muslims (which may have been largely bogus but that's another story). Yet our government and the EU DEMAND that Jews be ethnically cleansed from their own homeland, no less. Double standards are frequently applied against Israel by the world community.

For more than five years, I have been conspicuously alone in pointing out the racist, anti-Jewish nature of policies that require the evacuation of Israelis from Gaza, Judea and Samaria and, more lately, the halts on building and repairing homes and businesses owned by Jews in Jerusalem.

Finally, someone in Israel has figured this out and called the policies advocated by Barack Obama and the international elite what they are.

"Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews, Muslims and Christians or between eastern and western Jerusalem," said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. "The demand to halt construction by religion is not legal in the United States or in any other free place in the world. I do not presume that any government would demand to freeze construction in the United States based on race, religion or gender, and the attempt to demand it from Jerusalem is a double standard and inconceivable."

Barkat was responding to Obama's remarks on Fox News Channel about the approval of 900 new apartments in the southern Jerusalem community of Gilo as "settlement activity," suggesting, irrationally and irresponsibly, that it justified Palestinian violence. The Palestinian Authority quickly adopted Obama's line to rationalize future terrorist attacks.

However, even the most appeasing Israelis – people like Shimon Peres – see Gilo, with its existing population of 30,000 Jews right in the heart of the Israeli capital, as undisputedly Israeli territory, land that will never be negotiated away.

It's clear now Obama, like the Muslim world, doesn't believe any Israeli territory is beyond dispute.

This is what I have been saying and writing since 2004.

No more ethnic cleansing – not in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.

When the Palestinian Authority demanded that all Jews leave Gaza in anticipation of declaring it to be part of a future Palestinian state, the world did not notice the implications.

Why would Jews not be welcome living in a Palestinian state?

Because the Palestinian leadership is racist.

Why would blatant ethnic cleansing of this sort be embraced by the world when ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world is roundly denounced? Why is there an exception made for Jews? Why is it OK to remove Jews from their homes and businesses in the Middle East? Why is it acceptable to forbid Jews from building and repairing homes and businesses on the basis of their religion? How can this be tolerated, let alone condoned and championed as progressive policy by people like Obama?

Our politically correct, diversity obsessed government has learned nothing whatsoever from Fort Hood. The CIA is showing a TV ad which is aimed at recruiting muslims.

There's a swirl of activity in a spacious, modern kitchen as final meal preparations are made.

An older man tries to swipe a felafel off an appetizer plate but instead gets a loving hand slap from a woman. The happy, well-dressed guests move to a table full of food in a dining room adorned with Middle Eastern wall-hangings.

It's an inviting, if idealized, dinner party scene from any Arab-American home _ at least that's what the CIA seeks to convey in the first television commercial of its kind. The agency, in turn, hopes it's an inviting message to U.S. Arabs.

"Your nation, your world," a male voice says with a Middle Eastern accent, as the frame moves outside and pans out to show the party through a window of a gleaming, high-rise building. In seconds, the shot zooms out to an image of the U.S. from space. "They're worth protecting.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

This analysis of Sarah’s comment about Jews "flocking to Israel in the days and weeks ahead" is a huge stretch. Jeffrey Goldberg is a typical liberal prick who despises Christian conservatives and is trying to falsely portray them as anti-Semitic although they are the true friends of Jews and Israel. By doing so he seeks to justify his own alliance with the liberal left real anti-Semites. Not to mention he is attempting to portray Sarah herself as a kook, which is something the liberals are desperate to do because they live in fear of her. Sarah was most likely speaking about Israeli Jews moving into these neighborhoods or possibly immigrants. This does not translate into her believing in the rapture.

Ever curious about the eschatological implications of that Sarah Palin quote from her interview with Barbara Walters — the one in which she said she believes that “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead” — I called the executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Dr. Thomas Ice. The Pre-Trib Center is one of the preeminent evangelical institutions in this country arguing for literal Bible prophecy, and especially for pre-millenial dispensationalism, a complicated belief system that concerns the conditions that must obtain on Earth before Jesus can return (”Pre-Trib” is short for “pre-tribulation.”) One of the more famous conditions, of course, is the ingathering of the Jewish people in Israel. There are hundreds of variations of Protestant prophetic belief, but the Jewish role is generally crucial; very dramatic things will happen to the Jews in these prophetic belief systems, including their conversion to Christianity and their mass death in the battle of Armageddon.

I’ve been writing about these belief systems for a while, and an alarm bell went off in my head when I heard Palin talk about “days and weeks.” It’s quite one thing to say that Israel needs settlements to contain its growing population (a belief unsupported by the facts, but I’ll deal with that another time), but it’s something else entirely to predict that Jews in the Diaspora will imminently be flooding the Holy Land. I asked Dr. Ice if he thought that this statement by Palin, who has been exposed to this brand of evangelical thinking in her Alaska churches, was informed by these beliefs.

“I’ve read that Palin has been part of an apparently unique movement I’ve heard of — that her pastor, when she was in the Assembly of God, believed based on some personal revelation he claims to have gotten from God, that the Jews would move to Alaska during the Tribulation. But nevertheless, my understanding from what I’ve seen is that she holds fairly typical Protestant Zionist beliefs, and one of those beliefs is the regathering of the Jews in Israel.”

Ice told me he believes this sort of thinking is supported by the facts. “Over forty percent of the world’s Jews now live in Israel. What Sarah Palin probably believes is that this is the first regathering,” when the Jews all migrate to Israel. “This is a condition for the second regathering, the regathering in belief, when the Jewish nation is converted. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, because remember, Satan wants to wipe out the Jews to prevent the Second Coming, but Jesus comes to rescue the beleaguered Jews. We believe that the Jews are going to be converted so that they can call on Jesus to rescue them from Satan.”

I asked Ice if he, like Palin, believes that in the days and weeks and months ahead, American Jews — who make up the only sizable Jewish community still existing outside of Israel — might move there, in order to establish the conditions necessary for the Second Coming. “The historical reason Jews move to Israel is persecution, so when persecution heats up in a country, then the Jews come to Israel,” he said. “She may just have a general geopolitical belief that the world is going to be increasingly anti-Semitic.”

But what about America? I asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, America is becoming less Christian, more secular, and it’s our Puritan roots that have kept this country from being anti-Semitic. But now look at the secular left, it’s very anti-Semitic. Look at the people who are surrounding Obama. They’re very anti-Semitic. Things aren’t as bad as they are in Europe, but it’s getting much worse.” The worse it gets for Jews in America, of course, the closer we are to the Second Coming.

How common are these beliefs? I asked. “Fifty to sixty million people probably hold these beliefs,” he said.

If only American Jews would follow the lead of their Canadian counterparts and leave the democratic party in droves the way Jews are fleeing Canada's Liberal party. It's time for Jews to come to terms with the fact that the liberals have become their enemies since they have decided to align themselves with the muslims, have engaged in anti-Semitic vitriol and turned completely against Israel.

Naturally, when I saw “Jewish leaders” and an attempt to publicly embarrass Stephen Harper, arguably the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel head of government in the world, I thought that the Jewish leaders involved would be Bernie “Burny” Farber and the pro-Liberal Canadian Jewish Congress.

So when I read the item I was surprised, and even a little pleased, that the list of “Jewish leaders” denouncing Harper does not include Burny, or for that matter the leaders of B’nai Brith or the Canada-Israel Committee or the Simon Wiesenthal Center or any organization of synagogues or really anyone who leads anything, other than various branches of the Liberal Party.

There’s not a lot of leaders on the list of “Jewish leaders”. For that matter, many of the names aren’t Jewish, either. I guess it’s like the Holy Roman Empire — not really holy, not really Roman, and not much of an empire.

It’s not a list of Jewish leaders. It’s a list of the last 100 Jews left in the Liberal Party.

Many of the names have just too much of their lives and reputations invested in the Liberals to leave now, even though the party has turned its back on Jews and Israel. In this category I’d put old party hacks like Elinor Caplan and Karen Mock; if they’re leaders, who exactly are their followers? I suppose signing a meaningless petition is the least they could do in return for their party’s patronage. And then there are those for whom their true ethnic and religious identity is being Liberal. Being religiously Jewish or politically pro-Israel comes second for this category of signatories — they’d be Liberal even if the Liberals went truly insane and, say, Michael Ignatieff had his way and militarily forced Israel to capitulate to terrorists.

You can see the list of names here.

The first thing you’ll notice is, well, how short the list is, and even that is plumped up by having lots of husbands and wives both signing, and the odd kid. Compare that to a very similar letter issued by the Liberal Party in 2006, when they were facing their first serious defections of Jews to the Conservatives. Here’s that 2006 letter — without counting name by name, it looks like the new list of Jewish hold-outs in the Liberal Party is about half as long. Last one out, please turn off the lights.

Ten years ago — even five years ago — such a letter would have been signed by the stars of Jewish public life, politics and industry: Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman; at least one of the Aspers; a Tanenbaum perhaps. Not now, and surely not for lack of trying on the part of the Liberal war room. Canada’s leading Jews — Canada’s serious Jews — know that when it comes to Israel, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are the best thing that ever happened to them. And they also know that Ignatieff’s own slanders against Israel (such as his war crimes accusation) are just the beginning of the problem; behind Ignatieff stands the most anti-Israel caucus the Liberals have ever fielded, from Mark Holland to Borys Wrzesnewskyj to Denis Coderre, the last two of whom proudly march with or defend terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

Why is the president of the United States even giving a message to the world's muslims on the occasion of the hajj or at any other time? It's because our president hussein himself is a muslim scumbag. I still can't believe Americans elected someone named hussein. It's like a bad dream. The only message we should be giving them is by way of massive bombings.

Do any muslim leaders give us well wishes on Christmas or heaven forbid Hannuka or any of our other holidays? Why is it that we have to bend over backwards to ingratiate ourselves to muslims? They certainly don't feel the need to reciprocate. Why is it that we feel compelled to respect muslims when they don't respect us and they don't respect even basic human rights? I'm tired of this one way street.

Hussein Obama's message to muslims:

The rituals of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha both serve as reminders of the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world's major religions.

During Hajj, the world's largest and most diverse gathering, three million Muslims from all walks of life - including thousands of American Muslims - will stand in prayer on Mount Arafat. The following day, Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid-ul-Adha and distribute food to the less fortunate to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Middle school Students in Naples, Florida were suspended for participating in "kick a Jew day". I don't suppose they would ever have "kick a muslim day". The reason they can do this to Jews is quite frankly because Jews are perceived as passive, unwilling to fight back. No one fears abusing Jews. I wish that instead of whining to authorities the Jewish students would do some ass kicking back. Perhaps then the abuse would cease.

NAPLES — Ten North Naples Middle School students were suspended last week after district officials said they participated in “kick a Jew day.”

District Spokesman Joe Landon said a student told the dean of students at dismissal on Thursday that she was kicked because it was “kick a Jew day.”

The following morning Principal Margaret Jackson addressed the entire student body on the morning news regarding the incident, reviewing the code of student conduct, explaining why what happened was wrong, the need to respect one another and possible consequences, Landon said.

Jackson asked that anyone with information on the incident come to the office and speak with her or the assistant principal as they investigated the incident.

As a result, the district determined that 10 students should be punished. The students received a one day, in-school suspension, which was served today. The parents of the 10 students were also called and conferences with the parents followed the phone calls, according to Landon.

Parents of the students who were kicked were also notified of what happened, Landon said.

Landon said until further notice, the school will focus the first 20 minutes of each day on character traits, beginning with respect and kindness. Homeroom teachers will speak with the students about these traits and will focus on bullying prevention, he said. Videos on the topic will be sought out and used as part of the training, he said.

Landon said the first 20 minutes of the school day is normally used for reading time and tutoring time if students need help.

David Barkey, south area council for the Florida Anti-Definmation League, said the organization had been made aware of the incident.

“You are talking about an incident that has anti-Jewish bias if not anti-Semitism. You have Jewish students being singled out, harassed and assaulted,” he said. “If the allegations are true, it is possible these students violated Florida’s new anti-bullying law. And, if students were physically assaulted, it could rise to the level of criminal conduct.”

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The crank keith olbermann questions whether Fort Hood actually happened! So what does this demented creep think happened to those dead soldiers? This is the looniest thing he has come up with yet and that's saying a lot. And that other miscreant Matthews doesn't think there's a crime in an army major contacting al qaeda. These two are the biggest nutjobs on the air. MSNBC has become the official channel of moonbattery. Someone needs to pull the plug on them.

Since then we also learned that Hasan gave a medical lecture on beheading infidels and pouring burning oil down their throats (unfortunately not covered under the Senate health care bill). Some wondered if perhaps a pattern was beginning to emerge but were promptly dismissed as racist cranks.

We also found out Hasan had business cards printed up with the jihadist abbreviation "SOA" for "Soldier of Allah." Was that enough to conclude that the shooting was an act of terrorism -- or does somebody around here need to take another cultural sensitivity class?

And we know that Hasan had contacted several jihadist Web sites and that he had been exchanging e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen. The FBI learned that last December, but the rest of us only found out about it a week ago.

Is it still too soon to come to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terrorism?

Alas, it is still too early to tell at MSNBC. For Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews -- at least two of whom would be severely punished under Shariah law -- the shooting of George Tiller was an act of terrorism, no question. The death of a census taker in Kentucky was also an act of terrorism. (We learned this week that it was a suicide/insurance scam.) But as to Maj. Hasan, the jury is still out -- and will be out for many, many years.

Actually, according to Keith, the Fort Hood massacre may not have happened at all. He has argued persuasively, on several occasions, that it is impossible, literally impossible, to commit mass murder at a military base.

French Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann expresses shock that German leftist scum used violence to prevent the showing of his film Why Israel. There's nothing at all shocking about this. These leftists are nazis who want nothing less than the obliteration of Israel and the genocide of its Jews. The question should be why were these miscreants allowed to get their way and prevent the film from being shown. The left and islam have formed a very powerful alliance to wage war against western civilization and especially against Israel. Both need to be crushed.

Why Israel’ film canceled after violent German leftist protest Monday, November 23, 2009

The Jerusalem Post

By Benjamin Weinthal

Prominent French Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann expressed "shock" last week that German leftists in Hamburg had violently prevented the showing of his debut documentary film, Why Israel, about the role of the Jewish state as a homeland for refugees.

In late October, the 1973-produced film was scheduled to be shown at the B-Movie cinema, but roughly 50 left-wing activists from diverse anti-Israel groups affiliated with the anti-Zionist International Center B5 barred visitors from entering the movie house.

In Why Israel, Lanzmann - perhaps best known for his groundbreaking documentary Shoah - depicts Israelis who found refuge in Israel after the Holocaust.

The movie house said in a statement that it had been compelled to cancel the film screening and a podium discussion because "we were threatened with violence."

According to eyewitness reports in the German media, left-wing protesters ranging in age from 16 to 70 shouted "Jewish pigs" and "faggots" to the cinema attendees. A pro-Israel left-of-center group, Kritikmaximierung, cosponsored the showing of the film.

Werner Pomrehn, a radio host for the Hamburg-based station FSK, told the The Jerusalem Post on Friday that an anti-Israel activist had struck him in the face at the screening event. Asked about the International Center B5 demonstrators, Pomrehn, who reports on anti-Semitism in Hamburg, termed the group the "Pol-Pot Left."

The protesters propagate an "anti-Semitic position" that views "Zionism as racist," said Pomrehn.

The outrages just keep piling up. The latest is the matter of three heroic navy SEALS who are facing criminal charges for allegedly punching the terrorist scum who masterminded the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah. The islamo-nazi monsters burned their bodies and hung them on a bridge over the Euphrates. So now these men who risk their lives defending America are being charged with assault because they may have made the poor terrorist's lip bleed, tsk tsk. And it's very possible that the mutant actually did it to himself as al qaeda instructs them to do. You see the terrorists know our weakness and plot to take advantage of it.

We have fallen so far since WW2 when we were a nation with moral clarity, certain of our own goodness and the evil of our enemies and fought the war to win. These days we give constitutional rights to our enemies and punish members of our own military for doing their jobs. This is what happens when you have political "leadership" in Washington more concerned with pleasing world opinion then in protecting our own country. Either we get rid of these absurd rules of engagement or we bring the troops home. We should not be sending them off to war with their hands tied behind their back and with a commander and chief who doesn't have their back.

What angers me is the mass stupidity of American voters. Hussein obama told us in his book that he would stand with the muslims. He told us he was a citizen of the world in Berlin. His wife said she had never been proud to be an American until her husband was a presidential candidate. Hussein associated with communists, islamists and terrorists. All of this was out in the open during the campaign yet none of it mattered to the American voter. We have treason being committed at the highest level of our government and nobody notices. Hussein obama does not consider himself an American, his affinity lies with the muslim and the third world along with marxist regimes. This anti-American usurper is doing what pleases the muslim world and the international left, and he shows his loyalty to and solidarity with them by allowing these navy SEALS to be criminally charged. He can step in and stop this abomination being done to these heroes, but he won't.

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

"I gave the detainee a glance over and then left," the SEAL wrote. "I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health."

Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, spokeswoman for the special operations component of U.S. Central Command, confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com that three SEALs have been charged in connection with the capture of a detainee. She said their court martial is scheduled for January.

United States Central Command declined to discuss the detainee, but a legal source told FoxNews.com that the detainee was turned over to Iraqi authorities, to whom he made the abuse complaints. He was then returned to American custody. The SEAL leader reported the charge up the chain of command, and an investigation ensued.

The source said intelligence briefings provided to the SEALs stated that "Objective Amber" planned the 2004 Fallujah ambush, and "they had been tracking this guy for some time."

The Fallujah atrocity came to symbolize the brutality of the enemy in Iraq and the degree to which a homegrown insurgency was extending its grip over Iraq.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

In response to the question as to why we are still allied with the brutally misogynist and terror supporting saudi regime which is guilty of massive human rights atrocities, the answer lies with the powerful, extremely wealthy and insidious influence of the saudi lobby in Washington. Former American government officials receive huge sums of cash to lobby on behalf of saudi interests. And while these paid saudi lobbyists act against the interests of America, they simultaneously try to deflect attention from their own nefarious activities by falsely convincing Americans that our government is actually under the thumb of the vast Jewish and Israel lobby and that Israel is to blame for all of our troubles when in fact it is saudi arabia that is responsible for terrorism directed against us.

Why is America Still Allied with Saudi Arabia?

Saudis: Exporters of Radical Islamic Propaganda, Torturers and Rapists at Home

The Saudi mutawas (“morality police”) are terrifying. Like vultures, they swoop down on their vulnerable prey, especially women, and then send them straight to Hell. The “long beards” curse and beat their female prisoner, totally terrify her; then, they throw her into a dark, medieval dungeon, (assume the worst here). They remove her only in order to gang-rape and torture her—all presumably in the name of Islam. Her crime? In one instance, although the woman was a foreign national, she dared to take a taxi downtown without a male escort.

Risking the wrath of the religious police, a woman in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, loosens her veil to eat an ice cream HASAN JAMALI / AP

Remind me: Why are we still allies with Saudi Arabia? Why did President Obama bow to the King who presides over such Hell? Can we find no oil elsewhere, no other sources of energy? Do Americans really understand what goes on in Saudi Arabia? Have we forgotten that the Saudis have single-handedly exported Wahhabi fundamentalism and propaganda that has poisoned both westerners and those in the east—and have funded western universities and media as well? Does anyone remember that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia? Or that Osama bin Laden is a Saudi? Do we not understand that the Kingdom has funded bin Laden?

Yes, I know: The Saudi rulers oppose Al Qaeda who would overrun the sands were the House of Saud to ever quit the desert. And yet: Are we aware, even dimly, of how very barbaric the Saudi rulers themselves are—despite all their suave, smooth, westernized, glitzy exteriors? Do we understand what it means to live in the 8th or 9th centuries?

Prometheus Books is about to publish a book by Sami Alrabaa which is called Veiled Atrocities: True Stories of Oppression in Saudi Arabia. Once I picked it up, I literally could not put it down. Alrabaa is a professor of anthropology and sociology who, for five years, chaired a department of European Languages and Translation at King Saud University.

Mary Laurel Ross has also just published a very good book about Saudi Arabia. Veiled Honor (Father’s Press) is based on Ross’s having lived in the Kingdom for nearly fifteen years as the wife of an American military officer. The book is based on the many letters she sent her mother-in-law, who carefully kept them all. Like Alrabaa, Ross’s book does not whitewash the normalization of atrocities in the Kingdom as so many of the earlier books about Saudi Arabia once did.

I will review both books at a later date. The atrocities are visited upon both men and women, and definitely upon foreign workers and foreign nationals.

However, today, I want to focus on one story only which concerns woman’s inhumanity to woman—which is also the subject and title of my book, which has just been reissued with a new introduction. This story is contained in the opening chapter of Alrabaa’s book.

What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace. It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it.Just a couple of days earlier, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had written [2]:[T]he only time America has been able to advance [Arab-Israeli] peace … has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy. … Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other. … If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it.And it was just a few weeks earlier that Friedman’s colleague, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, claimed [3] that in Israel:The anxiety of the diaspora Jews has ceded not to tranquility but to another anxiety. … The annihilation psychosis has not disappeared but taken new form. … I worry when Israel makes a fetish of its exceptional status.A people that does not want peace, is not suffering enough pain to desire peace, and has an exceptionality fetish — is this enough abuse of Israel for a short period? Obviously not. (Regarding the second of those charges, it should be noted that it was issued from the banks of the Hudson to a Middle Eastern statelet that has absorbed scores of suicide bombings and a total of over 12,000 Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, as well as regular threats and predictions of its annihilation from Tehran, in less than a decade.) All those charges and many others, of course, pale before the Goldstone report’s [4] concluding section on “Actions by Israel in Gaza,” which states:The Mission found numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. … In some cases the Mission additionally concluded that the attack was also launched with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population. … [T]he Mission found that the following [acts] were committed by Israeli forces in Gaza: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment … and extensive destruction of property.Israelis are not just being portrayed as psychotic narcissists and people who refuse peace, but as terrorizers, killers, and torturers. Can it get much worse than that? Of course it can. As Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom — drawing on the same sort of “sources” as the Goldstone commission (i.e., Palestinians who started imbibing ideological Israel- and Jew-hatred with their mother’s milk) — wrote last August in Aftonbladet [5], Sweden’s largest daily:In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then [Israeli] minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. … While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open. …

We know that Israel has a great need for organs. … We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business.

Although these charges are at varying levels of severity, they all focus on Israeli society as a whole (including its civilian army) and are not just “criticisms of Israeli policy.” Note also that all these charges come from the “civilized” Western world. Indeed, Friedman, Cohen, and Goldstone are Jewish — and Kouchner is of Jewish descent! (For one of myriad examples of how Israel is characterized in the non-Western world, try this [6].)

And all this, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg if you add in all the obsessive United Nations resolutions, the boycott movements, the campus hate fests, and so on. At the time of writing, to take some random examples, an Israeli army officer who has been speaking out against the Goldstone report is reported [7] to be “limiting his activities to the United States” because, as he says, “I know that if I try to do the same thing in Western European countries, pro-Palestinian groups may try to have me arrested for participating in the Gaza operation.” (Europe has, for this reason, become very dangerous for Israeli military and even civilian [8] officials.) During a state visit to Brazil, Israeli President Shimon Peres has been called [9] “Shimon Hitler” by demonstrators in a banner showing him with a Hitler moustache beside a swastika imposed on a Star of David.

Peres is a peacenik and still he receives this treatment from the international left. These people are demented and morally depraved. Do liberal Jews understand yet that their "friends" on the left want to obliterate Israel and exterminate Jews as much as muslims do? Shouldn't Iran's dictator be shown with a hitler moustache and shouldn't the crescent, the symbol of islam, have a swastika imposed on it?

According to a November 19 report, a cabinet minister told Ha'aretz that Netanyahu has entirely frozen building in the settlements. Ever since this government was established in April, not a single tender has been issued or plan approved, not even in east Jerusalem. And this has been done by a cabinet including ministers considered to be extreme right wingers like Bennie Begin, Moshe Ya'alon, Avigdor Lieberman, Uzi Landau and Eli Yishai. "Yet," the minister said, "Bibi is getting clobbered, relentlessly"

Of course Bibi is getting clobbered relentlessly in spite of caving to international demands not to build housing for Jews. What does this tell us? Whenever you show the slightest inclination to cave under pressure, you are perceived as weak and the demands therefore increase. From the moment Israel signed the Oslo accords or even started negotiations, that opened the floodgates. Israel needs leaders who tell the world that ALL of the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and put an end to the so-called "peace" process and the idea of a two state solution. Israel must be as uncompromising as the arabs are.

Gilo and the Green Line in perspectiveNov. 22, 2009Maurice Ostroff , THE JERUSALEM POSTThe international brouhaha generated by the decision to build 900 houses in the Gilo suburb of Jerusalem points to the imperative need to reach a common definition of the word "settlement" in relation to Israel. The anger expressed by the White House and echoed by the EU and even China, obviously stems from the impulsive conclusion that Gilo is a settlement, no different from the outposts in remote areas of the West Bank. To quote the bard, therein lies the rub.

The $64,000 question then, iswhether Gilo is in fact a settlement and if so, what type of settlement it is. To all who prefer to analyze a situation before arriving at a conclusion it is important to look at the facts in context.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a settlement as "newly settled tract of country, or a colony," but according to the BBC, a settlement is merely a place where people live; as small as an individual house or as large as a city. Since a settlement also refers in law, to reaching agreement by parties to a dispute, one may hope that agreeing on a commonly acceptable definition of this inflammatory word may possibly contribute to "settlement" of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

THE REALITY is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.

The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media. The plan was initiated a long time ago by the Israel Land Administration. Since Gilo is an integral part of the city, the approval was given by Jerusalem's Construction and Planning Committee and, as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement released by his office, "Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city. The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, as in the US and any other enlightened place in the world. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike."

Ironically, Netanyahu has gone further than any previous Israeli prime minister. While continuing the policy of previous governments in refusing to consider a construction freeze in Jerusalem he unexpectedly did agree to halt construction in the West Bank during negotiations with the Palestinians.

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, surprised the world and angered some, by recognizing Netanyahu's departure from the stance of previous governments and praising his offer as "unprecedented." She was indeed very perceptive in recognizing the extent of Netanyahu's compliance with the demands of the White House.

According to a November 19 report, a cabinet minister told Ha'aretz that Netanyahu has entirely frozen building in the settlements. Ever since this government was established in April, not a single tender has been issued or plan approved, not even in east Jerusalem. And this has been done by a cabinet including ministers considered to be extreme right wingers like Bennie Begin, Moshe Ya'alon, Avigdor Lieberman, Uzi Landau and Eli Yishai. "Yet," the minister said, "Bibi is getting clobbered, relentlessly".

In his video message to the November 8 Rabin Rally in Tel Aviv, US President Barack Obama urged Israel to pursue Rabin's legacy. It is therefore relevant to recall that Rabin had no intention of returning to the 1967 lines. In his last speech to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, Rabin said "The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines....First and foremost, united Jerusalem - which will include both Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev - as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths...."

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I began writing this post, earlier today, by talking about imponderables, and then focusing on Obama policy with regard to Iran — which policy leaves many of us confused, frustrated, and angry. Following through, I posed a series of questions, all exceedingly valid:

Did he ever REALLY believe that Iran would be receptive to dialogue and compromise?

Has he been blinded to ominous Iranian realities because he is so solidly wedded to a philosophy that demands resolution of all conflicts via dialogue? Or because he is so intent on courting the Muslim world? Or because he rejects long-standing notions of America as moral cop and pretends to ignore what he doesn’t wish to deal with? Or because he wants to keep Russia — which is not predisposed to sanctions — happy? Or for some other as yet unspecified reason?

How does he justify the virtual slap in the face he delivered to the rebels in the streets of Iran, who pleaded for American support, after the election? (These dissidents, it should be noted, have just renewed their call for assistance from the US: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, spokesman for a key Iranian opposition movement has asked Obama to publicly demonstrate support for Iranian democrats and intensify financial pressure on the Revolutionary Guard.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Acknowledging that I have no satisfactory answers, I moved beyond these questions to the present: We’ve passed the time limit Obama had originally set for Iran to accept a proposal — as imperfect and dubious as it was — for shifting the situation and thereby reducing the threat of Iranian development of nuclear weapons. What is more, the West is now in possession of additional evidence regarding Iranian duplicity and hidden nuclear facilities. (Additional evidence, as if we didn’t already know it, that you cannot trust these guys.)

In the face of this, it has been generally acknowledged that it’s time to get tough with Iran.

And so last Thursday Obama issued a statement in this regard:

“Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal…and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences.”

What? “As a consequence we have begun discussing…the importance of having consequences”? How tepid and wishy-washy (and convoluted) could he get? Sort of like a mother, saying to her misbehaving child, “I’m going to discuss this with your father, and then you’ll see, you may be in big trouble.”

Obama’s explanation was distressing: “Our expectation is that, over the next several weeks, we will be developing a package of potential steps that we could take, that would indicate our seriousness to Iran,” he said. Potential steps? Nothing definitive there.

Hussein Obama’s behavior with regards to Iran is not perplexing at all. These are the actions of someone who is stalling for time as Iran develops a nuclear weapons arsenal. The horrible truth is that hussein obama WANTS Iran to have nuclear weapons. And that he is supportive of the America-hating, Jew-hating, holocaust denying mullah regime that wants to wipe Israel off the map. He also doesn’t care about freedom for the Iranian people. Simply put, hussein obama is anti-American and anti-Semitic. Why should anyone be surprised that a man who spent 20 years in jeremiah wright’s anti-American, anti-white and anti-Semitic church, associated with bill ayers, rashid khalidi and was mentored in his youth by communist frank marshall davis, would be anything other than a marxist anti-American himself? The American voter did not use their common sense and actually convinced themselves that these life-long associations with radicals and their brainwashing didn’t necessarily make hussein obama a radical.

A question to those who purport to favor a two state solution and push for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. At the very least shouldn't there be reciprocity in that Arabs ought to be removed from the rest of Jerusalem and for that matter all of Israel? Of course this is not something the advocates for creating a second Arab palestinian state would consider in a million years. What they advocate goes beyond segregation since they are endorsing the notion that Jews are forbidden to live where there is an arab majority whereas Arabs can freely live unfettered in Jewish majority areas. In other words the two state solution is a sham. Those who support the creation of palestine are really supporting the abolishment of Israel.

I also support a one state solution. I favor the annexation of Judea and Samaria by Israel and the expulsion of Arabs. There never existed a sovereign state of "palestine". The territory in question never belonged to them in the first place. The so-called "palestinians" are arabs and should be absorbed into arab nations. There are enough arab countries already. Not to mention the fact that "palestine" will be nothing more than another islamic terror state. Does anybody in their right mind doubt that? These people haven't shown any inclination that they are capable of living in peaceful coexistence. Muslims in general fail to peacefully coexist with their neighbors. Why create another islamic state?

No Room in Obama's Jerusalem for the Jew The same media which can't be bothered to notice that there is a proxy war going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, with Saudi jets bombing civilian targets. Who have paid no attention whatsoever to a week of violence between Algerians and Egyptians that included stonings and death threats, are up in arms over the building of 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem.

The Obama Administration and the media are naturally not upset by the Jerusalem municipality's decision to build 500 housing units for Arabs in Jerusalem. No they're upset by a private Jewish housing project built on privately owned land. And that double standard aptly conveys their premise that a Jewish house in Jerusalem is a "settlement", while an Arab house in Jerusalem is just a house. A Jewish home violates the "status quo" and is "unhelpful for peace", while an Arab home is just a home. There is of course a name for that sort of policy, it's one that Jimmy Carter who is still continuing his tour on behalf of Hamas knows quite well, Apartheid.

In response to the Nof Zion construction, Obama warned that, "additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security".But Nof Zion is not about security, as much as it is about an overcrowded Jewish population in Jerusalem looking for someplace to live. When the Arabs seized half of Jerusalem in Israel's War of Independence, they forcibly expelled the Jewish population of Jerusalem in a brutal act of ethnic cleansing that goes ignored by the same leftists who focus on elderly Arab men waving keychains in the air. Homes belonging to Jewish families were replaced by Arab families, who in turn were not expelled when Israel liberated and reunited both halves of Jerusalem in 1967.

While countries such as England recognized Jordan's annexation of East Jerusalem, they have failed to recognize Israel's reunification of the city. This has led to the ongoing absurdity in which children born in Jerusalem are treated as stateless by the US government and the US embassy remains in Tel Aviv, while the US Consulate in East Jerusalem does its best to pretend that it's in the capital of Palestine, completely refusing to recognize Israel's existence.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Geert Wilders is being banned by the Czech senate where he was to screen his film Fitna. Anyone who speaks out against the fascism, hatred and violence of islam and stands up for freedom and human rights are the ones being marginalized while the muslim maniacs who threaten to wipe us out are given respectablity. This is a country which was denied freedom for decades behind the iron curtain so you would think the Czechs would do everything to hold on to their freedom and not cave to islamic demands. Is there any country that's not intimidated by islamosupremacists?

The Czech Senate on Thursday banned an appearance by the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders on its premises. Mr Wilders was going to screen his anti-Islamic film, Fitna, and address a conference held by Czech anti-Islamists and Euro-sceptics.

The controversial anti-Islamic movie Fitna by Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, was due to be shown in the Czech Senate on November 30. Mr Wilders, who will be coming to Prague at the invitation of a Czech anti-Islamist website, eurabia.cz, and Civic Democrat Senator Jiří Oberfalzer, was also going to deliver an address entitled “Free Speech and the Islamization of Europe”. The news immediately sparked a huge controversy, and Senate leaders eventually banned Mr Wilders from appearing on the premises of the upper chamber. Civic Democrat Přemysl Sobotka is the Senate’s chair.

Přemysl Sobotka“When I found out about the details, and when I learned about what he was going to talk about here in the Senate, I said clearly it was a problem that such a controversial politician should appear in one of the chambers of the Czech Parliament.”

The Senate’s media commission, which originally approved the event, revoked its decision. Meanwhile, the Civic Democratic Party distanced itself from the invite, and so did the heads of both chambers’ foreign committees. I asked one of the organizers, Daniel Kotula, whether he was surprised by the reaction.

“I expected that there would be some voices that would not welcome Wilder’s visit but I did not expect that they would be from the Civic Democrats because they and Mr Wilders have very similar opinions. So I don’t understand. I expected this from some Social Democrats or the Greens for instance, but not from Civic Democrats.”

Senator Jiří Oberfalzer, who is well-known for his opposition to the EU’s Lisbon treaty, and the editors of eurabia.cz are now looking for another venue. They want to draw attention to how the Lisbon treaty will change the immigration policies within the EU. Daniel Kotula again.

Geert Wilders says: “It’s also related to the Lisbon treaty because it has some paragraphs related to immigration. Now that the Lisbon treaty is ratified, the EU can change immigration flows within the European Union, from example from Italy to central Europe.”

The country’s several-dozen-thousand-strong Muslim community is unfazed by the event, regardless of where Geert Wilders will screen his anti-Islamic movie. Mohammad Abbas is the head of the Muslim Union of the Czech Republic.

“Traditionally, the Muslim community here ignore such provocations. This man is coming to provoke, and I think that if we react to this, it will be exactly what he wants. He wants to show Muslims as people who are not rational. I think the best thing is to ignore him, just like that.”

Here are some graphic photos of women disfigured from having acid thrown in their faces by satanic islamic "men". Islam is the most evil, brutal, vicious and monstrous system on the face of the earth. It doesn't simply deprive you of freedom and human rights, but gives cultural and religious sanction to the most ghastly violence against women, gays, non-muslims and apostates. Whoever wants to refer to me as a bigot and islamophobic, that's fine because I do despise islam as any decent human being should. It is a blight on humanity. So to those squeamish liberals who's fragile sensibilities are offended by my hatred of islam, too damn bad.

Here is the revolting e-mail that Tigers for Israel sent to the muslim Student Association apologizing for inviting Nonie Darwish.

“I sincerely apologize for offending any person or group on campus, especially the Muslim community, Tigers for Israel deeply regrets the initial sponsorship, and we do not in any way endorse [Darwish’s] views.”

It’s beyond pathetic that the misnamed Tigers for Israel is what passes for pro-Israel activism on campus. I’m sure the muslims are having a good laugh at that.

Meanwhile liberal Jews push away friends like Nonie Darwish in hopes of gaining the approval of those who’s relgious doctrine commands them to hate and kill Jews.

I was stunned by the cancellation of Nonie Darwish’s talk at Princeton as both a Jew and a Rabbi. I am appalled by the outcome, disappointed at the lack of courage shown by Princeton’s Tigers for Israel and the American Whig-Cliosophic Club. However, I think that the problem borders on a politically correct stupor or psychosis. In an attempt not to offend Muslims or anything Islamic, the campus is silent on Islam. There is neither critical academic exploration into the totality of Islamic doctrine nor on how such doctrine has been put into practice in the 14 centuries since Muhammad and the ‘Ummah burst upon the historic scene from its Arabian Peninsula birthplace. Are the rigors of higher criticism of the Bible (an exercise Rabbis had undertaken 1800 years before Wellhausen’s founding of Higher Biblical Criticism, much of it couched in anti-Semitic jargon) not to be applied to Islam’s foundational sources (Qur’an, Hadith, Sira) for fear of offending? If so, when did the First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Speech include under its umbrella the right not to be offended? This was the argument provided during this most recent Princeton ruckus.

When did it become de rigueur to enforce a code of silence in academia, by professors and students, regarding Islam’s dealings with the kaffir, honor killings, and the like? It seems that Jews, Jewish students and the Jewish professorate, religious leaders such as Princeton’s Director of the Center for Jewish Life, in particular, suffer the pain of cultural and moral relativism. “We have to understand the cultural context/milieu as truth is multifaceted.” In so doing, the forces of decency and reason will wither and die. We Jews and Americans, by our hand, will shirk from robustly defending ourselves, our way of life, our American values and our Jewish identities. The result is self-censorship, a classic dhimmi behavior. The Islamists will only have to threaten the charge of libel and slander, or categorize as an Islamophobe anyone who examines and speaks about the essence of textual Islam. An Islam with its Qur’anic mandated treatment of women as chattel, Islam’s supersessionist and supremacist theology, second class treatment of non-Muslims, death penalty for apostasy, the forced payment of the jizya for non-Muslims, and the inhumanely segregated sexual roles which channel energy into Jihad, etc.

This is a direct result of Jewish leaders who have replaced a thorough grounding in Jewish knowledge and parochial concerns with the myth of universal utopianism, wherein leaders and educators have raised two or more generations of Jews with a complete absence of traditional Jewish values. The demands of mitzvot observance have been replaced with a misplaced emphasis solely on the emotional and spiritual dimensions of life. As a result, so-called secular progressive norms have filled the vacuum. We now have a situation wherein universal truths are no longer taught by our leaders and the space has been filled with “understanding the cultural norms of the other,” multicultural and moral relativism, and an emphasis on liberal politics so pliable that such a worldview can fit any construct.

The result is that we have sent generations of Jewish students to the college campus unable to defend themselves against the slightest anti-Jewish provocations, disconnected from the corpus of Jewish identity fostered by our common texts and history, uninterested or ashamed or embarrassed by Israel’s existence or actions taken by her in her own defense.

I am ashamed and embarrassed by cowardly and self-hating left wing Jews. Liberal Jews are ashamed of strong, brave, handsome IDF soldiers but presumably they are proud of being represented by a little, nerotic, nebish like Woody Allen.

As Rabbis, we learned that Rabbinic aphorism chutzpha k’lapei shamayim. We have the nerve to challenge the Almighty in contrast to the absolutism of Islam. However, our Campus Rabbis refuse to defend our students or teach them to defend themselves in debate and action. Where is the Campus Rabbinic leadership?

This has been a complete abdication of moral and intellectual leadership by our Jewish leaders in order to appear reasonable. The Islamists know western weakness well. The post-modern, global West does not want to be cast as intolerant. So, we give away the store, strip ourselves of our defenses and hope that we will be left alone. We will lose instead.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

The anti-Defamation League has rendered itself irrelevant. Why with everything Jews have to be concerned about, is Abraham Foxman going after conservative talk radio? I am ashamed and disgusted with the liberal American Jewish community. They have made their choice to stand by hussein obama over Israel. There has to be something deeply psychologically wrong with liberal Jews that they would shun Christian conservative friends in favor of leftists who work to see their people and the Jewish homeland obliterated. Who needs hamas, hezbollah et al when you have NYU and Berkeley Hillel and folks like Yoav Shamir and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna? Conservative Jews need to get organized, form groups, become more vocal and visible in order to counter the liberal Jewish groups. I'm tired of these liberal Jewish groups and individuals presenting themselves as the face of American Jewry. They do not represent all of us.

Whither American Jewry?

By Caroline B. Glick

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai, (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai's comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power.

Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama's hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood.

Wednesday Livni said, "Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus...and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement."

Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive.

Livni wants to be Israel's Prime Minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital.

One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong.

Now there are new guidelines for cervical cancer tests. Is there still doubt that obama hates women as much as he hates America, Christians and Jews? Does this contempt for women and seeing them as second class citizens come from his muslim background? I'm betting it does. Women are just seen as less important and even less than human in muslim culture. What else could be the reason that women are the first to be targeted for rationing of medical services under obamacare? And the majority of women voted for this bum. We must fight like hell against this health care bill.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Nonie Darwish's scheduled speaking engagements at Columbia and Princeton were canceled due to pressure from islamic supremacists. I expect liberals to be intimidated when it comes to islam. But when conservatives have even become too timid to stand up to muslim bullying and defend free speech, then we are doomed. Shame on the campus Republicans and the ironically named Tigers for Israel who failed to stand up for Darwish.

In our time, a speaker must face a gauntlet of hostility and a menacing crowd if she wishes to speak in favor of Israel or to tell the truth about Islam.

That’s if she’s lucky. Most such speakers never get invited or when they do, their invitations are canceled.

Nonie Darwish, the author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, has faced on-campus hostility and disruption before. Over the years, I have interviewed her about this a number of times. Like many of us, she has also sometimes been forced to have security guards with her when she speaks.

Phyllis Chesler and Nonie Darwish

This time, Nonie, who is the founder of Arabs for Israel, was invited to speak at both Columbia and Princeton. The official invitation at Columbia came from the very distinguished CAMERA, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), and from a new student organization there: Campus Media Watch, a group which is not yet quite up and running. Darwish flew from the West Coast, and was already all dressed up and ready to travel to Columbia when she got word that she’d been canceled.

“How humiliating is that? To come all this way, to be almost out the door, only to be told that they had to cancel my speech because campus security felt they could not protect me. Everyone is trying to blame someone else. Even the campus Republicans were afraid to sponsor me. SPME kept trying to fix it, but in the end, they could not.”

True, in 2006, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was not able to speak at Columbia because the notice given was too short. However, in 2007, Columbia University was able to provide security for him. And yet they could not provide it for Darwish. In 2006, Holocaust-denier Norman Finkelstein spoke at Columbia and in 2009, anti-Zionist, Israeli journalist Amira Hass spoke at Columbia–both without incident. Neither speaker was canceled. Next week, Noam Chomsky is speaking there. In Darwish’s view, “I doubt Chomsky will even need any security.”

Sarah Palin has expressed criticism over Obama's demand for the expulsion of Jews from parts of their homeland. Naturally the pro-jihadi kapos of J Street condemned her for it, claiming falsely that she is pandering to her right wing base and that her position comes at the expense of Israel's security. As if J Street actually gives a damn about Israel's security. But why should it be Jews who are punished and their communities abolished because of the threat to Israel's security by arab-muslim terrorists? It is the arabs who need to go, not be given a 22nd state, the second one in palestine which will bring them closer to Israeli population centers and invite more terrorism. What makes anyone think that if the Jewish communities were removed that would lesson terrorism against Israelis? When Jewish communities were removed from Gaza it led to hamas using the newly acquired land as just another launching pad for firing rockets at Israel, and at closer range.

I disagree with the Obama administration on that," Palin told Walters. "I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.

J Street responded by releasing a lengthy statement which condemned Palin's comments and accused her of pandering and ignorance. An excerpt:

Palin’s pandering to her right-wing base comes at the expense of the security of the State of Israel, the lives of those actually living the conflict, and the fundamental American interest in achieving a two-state solution in the near term. Her words reveal a glaring ignorance of damaging facts and a callous disregard of past and present U.S. policy.

Suddenly this massive spending president is concerned about saving money. So he has decided to cut back on the White House Hanuka celebration. There was no such scaling back on the ramadan celebration however.

The White House's forthcoming state dinner with the Prime Minister of India is expected to be larger than those of President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush. But another upcoming White House event will be smaller than in years past: The White House's annual Hanukkah party.

The guest list is expected to be shrunk by more than half, according to the Jerusalem Post. "Though several Jewish leaders expressed understanding for the economic and other reasons behind the cut, they acknowledged that it would likely help feed feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder."

The move comes on the heels of Obama's cancellation of an appearance before the General Assembly of North American Jewish Federations last week.

The White House's decision is likely a response to tough economic times and a desire to keep the holiday festivities reasonable.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The sanctity of Jerusalem for muslims is one big hoax. Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the koran. Though it is the holiest city in Judaism. References by the media and world leaders to eastern Jerusalem as "occupied" and having been "conquered" by Israel are outrageous not only for the fact that Israel liberated it in a war of self-defense against Arab aggression, after Jordan itself had illegally occupied eastern Jerusalem, but also since Jerusalem was never the capital of any arab-muslim state and the "palestinians" never existed as a nationality. There was never any sovereign state known as palestine. So who's territory is being "occupied"? Jerusalem, ALL of it, has always belonged to the Jews. So these aren't "settlements". Neither for that matter are Judea and Samaria occupied nor are those Jewish communities "settlements" for the same reason as stated regarding Jerusalem. I'm so glad that at least Bibi is defying Obama about building in Jerusalem.

Obama told Fox News in an interview that additional settlement building does not make Israel safer. He said such moves make it harder to achieve peace in the region, and embitters the Palestinians in a way that he said could be very dangerous.

On Tuesday night, senior government sources said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is willing to show "restraint" in construction in the West Bank, but will not accept any restriction on building in Jerusalem, following the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee's approval of the Gilo plan.

Army Radio reported overnight Tuesday that Netanyahu had instructed his government to refrain from making any statements in response to US criticism of the municipal committee's decision.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon joined Western countries in condemning Israel's decision, Army Radio reported Tuesday overnight.

He referred to the sprawling south Jerusalem neighborhood as a "settlement" built on land Israel "conquered from the Palestinians in 1967."

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Isabel Kershner is yet another kapo supporting the genocidal muslims against her own people. In a NY Times article she questions Jewish claims to the Temple Mount despite reams of archeological evidence of the existence of Jewish Temples.

NYT derisive over Jewish claims to Temple MountLeo RennertIn its Nov. 15 edition, the New York Times features a lengthy article by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner about publication of a book by Israeli and Palestinian scholars of Jewish and Muslim claims to Temple Mount. Kershner notes that this is the site that "Jews revere as the location of their two ancient temples, and that now houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam."

What interests me about the article is not so much the contents of the book, which I have yet to read, as Kershner's own derisive and dismissive view of Jewish claims to Temple Mount, coupled with a more deferential attitude to the Muslim side.

Putting aside the various views expressed in the book, here's Kershner's -- and the New York Times' -- own verdict on which side appears to have the stronger claims:

"The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau," Kershner writes.

Nothing in Kershner's article about archaeological finds that point the other way, especially about the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the current era.

Nothing in Kershner's article about evidence of the Second Temple in the writing of the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus.

Nothing in Kershner's article about the frieze on the Arch of Titus in Rome showing the triumphant return of Roman soldiers carrying the Menorah from the Second Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about Jesus's presence in and around the Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about specific refrerences in the Koran to both Jewish temples. Yes, in the Koran!

As far as Kershner is concerned, Jews may revere Temple Mount because they believe the temples existed, but her own spin is that there's no empirical evidence to substantiate such a belief.

As for the current status of the Temple Mount amid sporadic tensions and clashes, Kershner is much harder on Jewish behavior on Temple Mount than on Muslim outrages which she glosses over or totally ignores.

"Radical Jews," she reports, are "defying a long-standing rabbinical council prohibition on entering the Temple Mount." To illustrate the point, she visits Temple Mount herself and singles out "a small knot of Orthodox Israelis with skullcaps, the fringes of their ritual undergarments hanging from their waists." What an affront to civilized couture!

During the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign, there were attack ads against Chris Christie to turn women against him for siding with insurance companies to drop state mandated coverage of mammograms. Now the hypocritical demorats are going to put in place a national health care system which will deny women mammograms. And what's also ironic is that for so long liberals have been complaining that our medical system places profits over the lives of people and now this overhauled government run system is going to place saving money over saving lives.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Here we go again. Britain's Channel 4 attempts to stir up anger against Jews and Israel by broadcasting a documentary on that supposedly almighty and sinister Israel lobby. With islamic terrorism as well as cultural jihad threatening Britain and the rest of the west, why does the British media see fit to agitate against Jews and Israel rather than dealing with the country's real problem?

And if this supposed Israel lobby is so potent a force, why are the Middle East policies of the British government so anti-Israel?

And finally I believe channel 4 would be better off looking into the vast arab and muslim lobby which certainly is an extremely powerful force in Britain. But why deal with that when it's much safer to go after the world's perennial scapegoats and take the attention away from those who really present a threat to England, the islamic jihadis which the anti-Semitic left sympathizes with? This is their attempt to redirect the British public's anger over the islamization of their country and instead have it focused on the Jews.

During an investigation lasting several months, we have been able to reach several important conclusions. We maintain there is indeed a pro-Israel lobby in Britain. It is extremely well-connected and well-funded, and works through all the main political parties.

Some thoughts off the top of my head:

First of all, I blogged yesterday that HonestReporting was also contacted by Dispatches just days ago. For an investigation "several months" in the making, it's very fishy that Channel 4 waited till the very last minute to contact HonestReporting and other Jewish organizations.

I don't know anything about openDemocracy, which Oborne links to in the above snippet, but they're already offering "The Pro-Israel Lobby In Britain pamphlet." It's safe to assume that openDemocracy was intimately involved with C4's investigation -- its logo on the cover sits right beside the Channel 4 logo. You can even order a copy before tonight's broadcast, or save the money and read the pamphlet (pdf format) in full at Channel 4's web site for free.

My antennae are also twitching at openDemocracy's introduction, which was written by one Antony Lerman. If you look at Lerman's archives at The Guardian, you'll understand why.

The headaches created by Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have come full circle. Walt and Mearsheimer wrote about a Jewish lobby in the US, but it was a British publication, the London Review of Books, that was first to give a soapbox to their views. Will UK Jewry respond to Oborne the way American critics addressed Walt and Mearsheimer?

I absolutely agree with Melanie Phillips. The litmus test to determine who truly is a moderate muslim is determined by their attitude towards Jews and Israel, its right to exist and defend itself. This of course means there are scant few true moderate muslims, which further means there really isn't any such thing as moderate islam.

As I understand it, auto-immune diseases are caused when the immune system which protects the body turns upon itself, mistaking friendly organisms for foes and vice versa.

One might say that just such an affliction now assails the British and American intelligentsia — with some British Jews themselves amongst the worst affected.

The latest example of this general disorder was the reaction to the jihadi attack in Fort Hood, Texas, last week when a Muslim army psychiatrist screaming ‘Allahu akhbar’ gunned down and murdered at least 13 people, leaving dozens more injured.

Despite evidence over many months that this man had been consumed by Islamist fanaticism, the US and British media (not to mention President Obama) spent several days playing down or seeking to deny that this was an Islamist religious atrocity.

There are several reasons for this near pathological state of denial: multicultural ideology, extreme ignorance, funk. But another is the anxiety not to tar all Muslims with the same extremist brush.

This is a very proper instinct. Many Muslims in Britain and America have fully signed up to democracy and human rights; indeed, they are themselves potential victims of the Islamists and the sharia law they aim to impose upon the ‘infidel’ world.

So it is very important to separate moderate Muslims from Islamists. But how can you tell a genuine moderate from the dissimulators?

I myself have stumbled in this area. Having believed that the government-funded ‘anti-Islamist’ campaigner Ed Husain was as advertised, I and many others were rudely disabused of that notion recently when he sprang to the defence of the Muslim Council of Britain’s spokesman Inayat Bunglawala, who openly declares he wants Britain to become an Islamic state and who has refused to condemn the Islamic practice of stoning to death.

Among the many jibes Ed Husain threw my way when I criticised Bunglawala was that I supposedly deemed any Muslim who did not support Israeli Likud policy to be an Islamist.

Interestingly, this absurd caricature was not dissimilar to a charge once made to my face by the Hamas-promoting Dr Azzam Tamimi, who declared disgustedly that I would only consider a Muslim to be a moderate if he supported Israel.

While Ed Husain was wrong, for once Tamimi was spot on. I do indeed think that the issue that defines true Muslim moderation is the absence of hostility towards Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people.

There are some Muslims who have zero prejudice towards Israel and the Jews. I have met a few of them — and there are indeed only a very few. They are excessively brave people.

They have to be — because even among Muslims who would never have any truck with sharia law or Islamist violence, theologically-based prejudice against Israel and the Jews runs very deep indeed.

Those who are free of such bigotry have the integrity to reject that theology. They are true moderates because, in supporting Israel’s defence against those who want to extinguish it as a Jewish state, they are on the side of truth against lies, justice against injustice and freedom against murderous tyranny.

Those who don’t support Israel’s self-defence — such as Ed Husain — are on the wrong side of the fight to defend civilisation. No-one — whether Muslim, Christian, atheist or anything else — can be considered to be a ‘moderate’ person if he or she is bigoted towards Israel or the Jewish people. You cannot be a moderate bigot.

Jewish community leaders who are engaged in outreach to the Muslim community are making a heroic attempt to build bridges. But unless they make their friendship conditional upon rationality towards Israel and the Jews, such initiatives are likely to be as conducive to communal health as an auto-immune deficiency to the body’s natural defences.

Hussein Obama and the UN are prepared to support an arab-muslim land grab of Jewish territory for the creation of an islamic terror state. I'm guessing that the UN will enforce this "palestinian" declaration of statehood with troops and attempt to remove Jewish residents from their homes. Israel must preemptively annex the territories and remove the Arab occupiers from Judea and Samaria.

TEL AVIV – A top Palestinian Authority official told WND that the PA reached an understanding with the Obama administration regarding a Palestinian threat to unilaterally ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state outside of negotiations with Israel.

Ahmed Qurei, former PA prime minister and member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee, said in an interview that the PA "reached an understanding with important elements within the administration" to possibly bring to the U.N. Security Council a resolution to unilaterally create a Palestinian state.

Asked to which "elements" he was referring, Qurei would only say they were from the Obama administration.

A top PA negotiator, speaking on condition of anonymity, named the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, and National Security Council member Samantha Power as among the Obama administration officials who were involved with the Palestinians' U.N. threat.

Despite widespread assumptions the U.S. would veto any such U.N. Security Council resolution, the PA negotiator said that in initial discussions, the Obama administration did not threaten to veto their conceptual unilateral resolution.

"The U.S. told us that they prefer a negotiated settlement with Israel, but if we (Palestinians) insist on a resolution, the Americans will not necessarily reject it," the PA negotiator said.

"The U.S. has a history of never before vetoing any U.N. move to create a new state," the negotiator pointed out.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said yesterday the Palestinians had decided to turn to the U.N. Security Council to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

Separately, the negotiator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Obama administration is "totally on board" with a plan by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to create a state on the pre-1967 borders within two years.

Again this is off-topic but important. This reversal regarding mammograms and even self-examination means that already rationing is underway. This is what the policy will be if the government takes over health care. In other words they don't even want women to exam themselves because they might find a lump and therefore have to get a biopsy and if cancer is found, then treated. Obama would just prefer women die in order to save money. And there are many women who get breast cancer in their 30's and 40's and they WILL just die before they even know they have it. Obama wants to kill women. Of course nancy the bitch pelosi won't have to worry about herself and other women in her family who will of course be cared for along with other elites. But to hell with the average woman. America has the highest breast cancer survival rate in the world but that will change with a government takeover of the health care system. There will be many premature deaths. We must stop the push towards socialized medicine in its tracks.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Hillary Mann Leverett is absolutely repugnant. Iran's holocaust denial rhetoric and its threats to wipe Israel off the map are the result of Iran's fears about Israeli aggression according to her. This is the kind of dangerous and sick moral inversion which permeates Foggy Bottom. It's frightening that this is the worldview of those who are entrusted with safeguarding America. It doesn't occur to Hillary Mann Leverett that Iran's threats and holocaust denial has anything to do with Jew-hatred being an integral part of islamic doctrine. Apparently she also hasn't been apprised of the shiite belief in the hidden imam which can only return after the world is destroyed and that perhaps this madman in Tehran has the desire to facilitate this outcome. She also apparently never heard the "moderate" hashami rafsanjani state a few years back that one nuclear bomb would destroy Israel while a retaliatory strike would only damage the muslim world. I would say that statement is pretty much a call for launching a first strike against Israel. She's afraid of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities but not on Iran itself having nuclear weapons. She believes we ought to take a softer approach towards Iran (as if we have ever been tough with them anyway) and a more hardline approach towards Israel. She's more focused on dismantling Israel's nuclear weapons than preventing Iran from acquiring nukes. There is no danger from an Israel which is nuclear armed since Israel is a responsible, free and democratic nation while Iran is an islamist, genocidal dictatorship. Not to mention that Israel, being the tiny nation that it is and surrounded by much larger enemies, it's nuclear weapons arsenal is what keeps the balance of power. Furthermore as far as Israel ignoring the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Israel is not a signatory to it. She also claims to be concerned about the threat to American interests should Israel strike Iran's nuclear facilities. I'd like to know how it would be in America's interest for Iran to get nukes? Doesn't she consider they can be used against us, most likely supplied to terrorists who would sneak in and detonate them? Or perhaps and EMP attack. The article claims she isn't anti-Israel but I fail to see how her views can be seen as anything but anti-Israel. I hate to say it but some of Israel's worst enemies are liberal Jews.

The U.S. Jew whose Iran views rile Israel intelligence officials

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Israel New, Iran Nuclear

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hillary Mann Leverett and her partner and husband, Flynt Leverett, make the Iran desk staffers in the Israeli intelligence community see red. For the past two years the Leveretts, both of whom are former U.S. National Security Council and State Department officials, have preached relentlessly against using sanctions and threats against Iran.

In late September, a harsh op-ed they wrote condemning the Obama administration appeared in The New York Times. In it they argued that the lofty talk of "openness" and the promise of "dialogue" with the Iranians are just empty rhetoric. On their Internet site, in lectures, in interviews and in their journal articles, they present assessments and proposals for action that are different from, and sometimes nearly the opposite of, those that politicians and experts in the West and in Israel present the public. They are critical of the U.S. support of Israel's nuclear ambiguity and are horrified by the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear installations.

Mann Leverett, today the CEO of the Stratega political-risk consulting firm, was a panelist in a discussion on Iran at the J Street conference in Washington two weeks ago. Before a full house of a mostly Jewish audience, she analyzed the Iranian strategy without bias or emotion: For years now, more sanctions, more boycotts and more threats have not budged Iran from its nuclear program, and they will not budge it in the future. The time has come to try to talk the Iranians in a different language, a language of respect and cooperation.

According to her, since the invasion of Iraq, Iran's regional influence has increased to the point that, without it, no progress can be made on such critical issues as the Palestinians, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and energy.

In a conversation with Haaretz, Mann Leverett, 41, said that up until seven or eight years ago, relations with Iran were "in the category of 'nice to have' for U.S. foreign policy. Today, rapprochement with Iran is in the 'must-have' category: The United States cannot achieve any of its high-profile objectives in the Middle East without a more productive relationship with the Islamic Republic, as it is constituted rather than as some wish it to be."

Mann Leverett's critics find it hard to dismiss her by labeling her as an "Israel hater." She grew up in a Jewish household, attended Brandeis University, worked as an intern at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was born in the offices of AIPAC. She served in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo under Dan Kurtzer (and also in the embassies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar). When she returned to the United States she joined a team headed by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Richard Holbrooke, which participated in talks with Iran over Afghanistan.

Her acquaintance with the Iranians deepened after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when she worked at the National Security Council in the unit that advises the president on Iran, Afghanistan and the Gulf states. She speaks of impressive cooperation with the Iranians, leading to the capture and expulsion of 200 Al-Qaida members from their country. According to Mann Leverett, a directive from Tehran ordering the Iranian militias in Afghanistan to join a local force established by the United States spared the Americans the kind of trouble and losses being inflicted by the militias Iran is now funding and training in Iraq.

"I was deeply impressed," she said, "by the quality of my Iranian interlocutors and the sophisticated manner in which they thought about their country's national interests."